BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team and coaching staff visited the children’s ward at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center on Wednesday to spread some holiday cheer as part of the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program.
The entire team, including head coach John Brady and associate head coach Butch Pierre and their children, entertained the children with Christmas carols. Adorned in Santa Claus hats, the team signed autographs and handed out media guides and posters while visiting with the children.
This is the second straight year that the team had visited the hospital for the holiday season after spreading a little Christmas cheer last season.
Portions of the visit will be shown in an upcoming episode of “Inside LSU Basketball with Coach John Brady“. The show airs locally on WBRZ-TV (Channel 2) in Baton Rouge at 10:35 p.m. on Sundays and on Cox (Channel 4) on Mondays at 9:30 p.m. The program also airs on Cox Sports Television (Channel 37) regionally, in Baton Rouge on Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m.
The hospital visits are sponsored by the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program. The CHAMPS (Challenging Athletes Minds for Personal Success)/Life Skills Program was designed by the NCAA to help student-athletes realize higher academic achievement, increase likelihood of graduation and enter a chosen profession with a higher level of vision, knowledge, motivation, self-responsibility and greater overall success. In Spring 2003, the CHAMPS/Life Skills Program at LSU honored one of the Tigers’ most memorable graduates, Shaquille O’Neal, by naming the program after him.